


Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart.

by burngormanlesbian



Series: I will walk down to the end with you [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Minor Blood and Gore, Minor Violence, Pacific Rim Uprising Spoilers, Post Pacific Rim Uprising, but we all needed it, hermann is a sad lovestruck bitch, precursor possessed newt, the power of love triumphs all, this is really really dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 04:01:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14096766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burngormanlesbian/pseuds/burngormanlesbian
Summary: Hermann uses the power of love to bring Newt back.





	Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart.

**Author's Note:**

> JUST A DISCLAIMER this is really dumb and mostly self indulgent, because i haven't seen anyone write about newt actually recovering yet and i am a SUCKER for the dumb ass "power of love wins every time" trope. we all needed this. please enjoy.

Hermann is asleep when he gets the call. If lying in the darkness still fully dressed counts as sleeping. He doesn’t sleep much these days; if the nightmares before all this were enough to have him screaming himself awake and showering to wash the sweat and feeling of unknown things crawling over his body, then the nightmares nowadays must be the closest a living man can get to experiencing the very fires of hell itself. He’s only here now because he’d near passed out in the briefing room some hours earlier, and when he’d blown off everyone’s concerns, he’d been essentially manhandled back to his room and instructed not to come back until he’d got some proper rest. 

They’re right to be concerned, of course. If he’s really going to be honest, Hermann has barely slept since the day Newt strangled him half to death. He doesn’t dare risk letting sleep reach him: just the thought alone of reliving that sends chills running down to his feet, and all the way back up to his chest, where the lingering trauma of watching the death in Newt’s eyes as his hands gripped like vices around his windpipe pools up like black tar and burns him from the inside out. He hasn’t slept a second in four days.

So it’s not really much of an irritance when his phone starts chirping at around four a.m. Other than that he left it on the dresser across his bedroom, and his leg can never really be trusted when he’s fresh out of bed, so it takes him more than just a few rings to steel himself enough to stumble across the hard tiling and accept the call without even checking who it is. Before he even has chance to choke out a hoarse greeting, he’s bombarded with the panicked yells of about four different voices.

“About damn time, Gottlieb! What the hell have you been doing? Where are you?”

Holding the receiver a good inch away from his face, for the sake of his eardrums, Hermann replies, “I was sleeping, like I was advised to. Not just advised, in fact, I was practically forced into bed!” He shakes his head in objection.

There’s the harsh sound of one voice hushing the others, and then Liwen Shao’s voice cuts through the silence, clear and sharp in her distinctly mandarin intonations. “We need you, Doctor Gottlieb. Immediately.” She speaks with a steady tone, for whose benefit, Hermann can’t work out, but there’s a tangible bite of urgency behind it all. It makes Hermann’s stomach twist, as if his insides are a rollercoaster, and it’s slowly climbing to the top before the inevitable and sickeningly sudden drop, and the world spins into chaos. 

He takes a deep breath, still trying to collect himself and to ignore the pain pinching at his leg. “Wha- what on earth could you need me for, at such an ungodly hour?” He lies now, that childish spite acidic in the back of his throat as he grinds his shoe into the point he’s trying to make, “I really was sleeping, you know. This work you’ve been putting me up to, alone, may I remind you, really is taking its toll on me. I would greatly appreciate the sentiment if you could leave me for just a few more-”

“It’s Doctor Geiszler.”

His stomach finally teters over the edge and drops directly into a pit of fire.

Before he has time to swallow the words, his resolutely aching legs are moving and he’s stumbling out of the room. His phone clatters against the floor and the screen smashes triumphantly, cutting off the call. Not that he’s interested in continuing the conversation. 

He doesn’t even realise that he’s left without his cane until his legs give out under the hobbling sprint he’s broken into. He doesn’t fall as much as simply crumple to the floor, completely boneless for a second, and his sharp, agonied exasperations ring out around the otherwise silent corridor. He gives his thighs a frustrated punch, cursing his condition, angry that his body can’t keep up with how fast his mind, and his heart, are racing. He’s rewarded with a sharp stab of pain that runs up his spine and he growls in defeat. He squeezes his eyes shut.

In the blackness, there’s a familiar warmth; almost a glow, resting behind his eyes. Purple and blue and green phosphenes dance around his peripheral and slowly merge to form one singular image in his mind, absolute and definite: Newt.

Hermann clenches his teeth and pulls himself to his knees. That’s all he can think right now. He’s rather stupid in hindsight; he didn’t even stop to ask what was happening with Newt. It suddenly hits him that the reason Shao woke him up is probably because he’s dead. Cold panic begins to settle over the boiling tar in his chest, clouding over any real sensibility or critical thinking skills he might have left. It’s not just the lack of sleep that’s keeping him from thinking straight. He’s really starting to think that there’s something else - and it gnaws at his mind like vermin. 

And now - he bites down hard on his tongue, willing the tears back - now Newt may be dead, may be lost to him before he’s even got the chance to tell him. He may be dead, and Hermann never got to see his smile again. He’ll be left with the last smile Newt showed him, right before he turned on him and sent the world into chaos. It wasn’t him smiling: Newt’s smiles were bright and full of teeth and warmth; they stretched wide across his face and his eyes lit up with the glory of a thousand sunny days. Newt’s smiles radiated life. That smile - it was carved by the icy blade of death itself. 

Oh, there’s nothing Hermann wouldn’t give to see Newt smile again.

“Dammnit,” he hisses, dragging himself to the wall, using the cool surface to force himself to his feet. He wills his legs to please, _please_ hold on just a little longer, and somehow the pathetic things manage to keep him upright. Still clinging to the wall, he continues onwards, down the hall, sweeping past the briefing room. Straight to the basement where they’re holding him.

Hermann is out of breath and in a great deal more pain when he reaches the cell. He’d only been here a few times, just to stare through the glass at him, chained up and mostly dead to the world. He never knew Hermann was there - or if he did, he never acknowledged him. Hermann would stand there for minutes at a time, fists clenched so tightly around his cane that it shook and sang patterns on the floor, just hoping he would look up at him. _Come on, you bastard, I’m right here. Look at me._ Of course, he never did.

Shao, Reyes, and several other officers are already there, along with more than a few armed guards. There’s usually two stationed outside Newt’s cell - lord knows why, he’s chained up under so many restraints in there that there’s no way he could even attempt to escape - but there’s at least six right now. Shao is pacing, tapping her arms manically with every step. She sucks in a short breath when she sees Hermann. “Doctor Gottlieb, thank goodness. We...” she pauses, hesitates. “We really do not know what to do. Please, please see for yourself.”

She beckons Hermann over to the door. Everything he has is screaming at him to not move. He doesn’t want to see whatever is in there. He draws in a shaky breath. “Miss Shao…” he looks at her, pleading and fear swimming in his eyes. “...What is going on?”

“If you’d stayed on the call for five more seconds, we’d have told you,” Reyes jabs at him, stepping forward. She looks stressed, panicked, almost. As if she’d seen a ghost.

It takes every shred of strength left in Hermann to get his next words out without breaking down.

“Is he dead?”

Reyes’ eyes widen with surprise, and then with amusement. She folds her arms at him. “What? No. We wouldn’t’ve woken you up for that. We’re not so cruel.”

Hermann feels the knot in his intestines unwind a little. He’s much more relieved than he’d like to admit. He does believe it’s selfish to will Newt to continue living like this. At least death would grant him some respite from all this. At least he wouldn’t be the Precursors’ puppet anymore. “Oh,” he breathes. “Then, what is it?”

Reyes sighs. “That’s just it,” she looks towards the cell door, where Shao is pressed against the glass window. She’s shaking. “We don’t know.”

Hermann screws his courage and limps to the cell door, drawing in as much air as his weak lungs can hold. When he reaches the window, he almost blacks out on the spot.

Newt, no longer held in his chair by metal cuffs, is writhing around on the floor like a beheaded snake, sweating and screaming and scratching at his neck and face. He’s soaking wet and covered in bruises that Hermann instantly recognises as self-inflicted, and rings of dry red and brown over his face tell him that he’s been vomiting blood. Hermann had seen Newt in a similar state to this before, when he first drifted with that _verdammt_ Kaiju brain; but that was nothing compared to this. To compare the two would be to compare a papercut to a gunshot wound. To the head.

“Dear God,” he cries out, pressing his trembling hands against the window. “How the hell did this happen?” There’s harshness in his voice. Accusatory.

“Pentecost and Lambert made contact with the Precursors,” Reyes explains. Hermann spins around at that. He really had missed some action whilst he was pretending to sleep. “We don’t know what happened after that - our signal was cut off - but something must’ve happened because we got a call from the guards down here, saying Geiszler’s gone crazy and nothing will calm him down or stop him fitting,” she looks directly at him, eyes steely but earnest. “And he’s been calling out for you.”

Hermann very nearly breaks into a fit of laughter at that. It’s all so ridiculous; maybe the sleep deprivation finally got the better of him, and this is his fever dream right before he dies. He’d quite honestly welcome death at this point. “M-me?” he almost scoffs. “Why...why would Newton be asking for me?”

“We don’t know, but if it’ll stop him from bleeding himself dry all over the maximum security cell, then we may as well grant him his last wishes,” one of the officers chimes in. Hermann never bothered to learn his name; right now, he’s rather glad he didn’t. He’s clearly an arsehole.

“You have to go in there, Doctor Gottlieb,” Shao pleads to him. She takes his calloused hands in hers. She’s a small, dainty woman, but clearly not weak: she solo piloted a jaeger, for one. Hermann has never seen her plead before. “If there’s even a small chance of getting him back…” 

Hermann breaks free of her grip, running his fingers through his unkempt hair. His mind is running a million miles a minute. “Y-you want me to go in there,” he struggles out, pointing a shaking finger at the door, “Knowing that he is possessed by a hostile alien race, bent on earth’s destruction - he could kill me at any moment!”

“Whatever had control of him before, I don’t think they’re in there now,” Reyes interjects. “If Pentecost really is engaging with the Precursors, I doubt they’ll be focusing on puppeteering a human anymore. He’s fulfilled whatever purpose they were using him for. He’s of no use to them now.” Hermann forces his breathing to slow a little, considering her reasoning. When he looks back into the cell, Newt has stopped squirming, and instead curled up in the fetal position, heaving and clawing at his forehead. Hermann’s heart aches.

_If there’s even a small chance of getting him back…_

He steels himself, bravely holding Reyes’ gaze. “Send me in.”

Newt’s cell is mostly soundproof; Hermann couldn’t hear the sounds he’s making before now. He’s suddenly glad he couldn’t, because as soon as the guards unlock the door for him, he’s met with a sickening concoction of guttural groaning and whimpering. He sounds like a deer that’s been hit by a truck and left on the roadside to die. Hermann’s gut twists desperately: everything is telling him to get out, to leave him here to die, to run away and forget Newt ever existed. 

But he can’t. He won’t allow himself.

He stands awkwardly over Newt’s deflated form, watching him struggle out ragged breaths. He’s muttering something unintelligible, thick, deep red blood coating his teeth and lips and spilling down his scratched-raw cheeks in a steady, viscous stream. He draws in a stuttering breath. On the way out, the air forms one word, “Hermann.”

Some kind of motherly instinct kicks in and Hermann drops to his knees. He lifts Newt’s head from the filthy linoleum and cradles it, letting the blood pool in his palms. “Newton,” he whispers. “Newton, can you hear me?”

Newt’s eyes fly open and his stare locks with Hermann’s. Like green lasers boring straight into him; although, there’s something missing that was there the last time Newt looked at him - his eyes lack the cold, dead stare and the rage burning behind his pupils. Now, he just looks terrified. He’s broken. 

Newt grabs onto Hermann’s cardigan with bloodied fingers. He twists the fabric around his hands as if holding on for dear life. He’s lost a lot of weight. “Hermann! Hermann, you have to listen to me, you have to-” he’s cut off by a laboured scream. He digs his nails into Hermann’s arms. Whatever’s happening, he’s not in control of his body. It looks like it’s taking all his strength just to manage his vocal cords. “- you have to get them out, get them out of my head, please get them out, they’re-” he screams again, this time pounding at his temples as he lets go of Hermann. “- they’re trying to take me with them! They’re taking me, they’re - it _hurts_ , Hermann!”

They’re trying to take him with them. Back to the Anteverse, back to the Precursors. Hermann was right: Newt has been in there the whole time, struggling to get out - they were forcing him back into the subconscious. And now they’re leaving, and they’re taking Newt - the real Newt - with them. It hits Hermann like a bullet train.

Newt’s not gone yet. He can save him.

He reaches around to hold Newt’s cheek. “Alright, Newton, please listen to me, _Newton_!” he shakes Newt. His eyes have suddenly blanked out and his grip has become weak. He’s breathing very slowly - just barely hanging on - but he’s listening. “Newton, you have to tell me what to do. Please tell me, Newton.” His hand feels horribly cold against Newt’s bloodied and burning face.

Newt chokes a little; on blood or panic, Hermann can’t tell. He relaxes under Hermann’s hand. “You have to kill me.”

Hermann’s blood runs deathly cold. “I- I can’t… I can’t kill you, Newton.” It’s not just a matter of cowardice. He won’t even consider the option.

Newt groans. Exasperated. Like he’s been inconvenienced. “Please, Hermann! I can’t do this anymore! Please, just… just get it over with. Put a bullet in me, strangle me - I don’t _care_ how, just do it! Please!” Tears begin to well up in his eyes. He really is desperate now. Hermann presses his fingers into Newt’s jaw. Warning him.

“I am not going to kill you, you utter fool! And I will not let anyone else do it, either!”

“Please! Before they take me! I don’t want to go back with them!”

“I’m not going to let them take you! But you’ll be damned if you think I’m going to kill you!”

“ _Then what are you going to do?!_ ”

Their faces are close together, so close their noses are almost touching. It’s a stare off. Hermann laughs a little to himself. He’s always taken himself to be the pessimist, the nihilist. The straight man to Newt’s stooge. Newt is always boundlessly optimistic. Newt laughs in the face of death. He built a neural bridge from spare parts and drifted with a Kaiju, going where no man had ever gone before, and he left nothing but a spiteful audio recording for Hermann to remember him by, for God’s sake. Of course, this is what got him into this mess in the first place. But, despite Newt’s unending recklessness, Hermann never expected to be the one left standing at the end of all this.

Then again, Hermann has always been a coward.

He’s never even told Newt.

Hermann isn’t sure what happens next, or why it happens. It’s certainly not of his own accord. He swoops forward and takes Newt’s frail body in his arms and presses him close. Newt gives a surprised yelp in response, arms forced down by his sides under Hermann’s weight.

“Wha-”

“They’re trying to take you, are they not?” Hermann mutters, breathing heavily in Newt’s ear. “They’re pulling at your conscious. We - I - just have to pull it back. I just have to be stronger than them.”

“You can’t beat them, Hermann,” Newt replies weakly. “You can’t… you’re not…” his voice cracks and breaks off. Without warning, his whole body begins to shake uncontrollably. Hermann resolutely holds him in place, eyes wide as he watches him struggle against him. He looks like he’s going into shock: eyes screwed up, teeth grinding, and shuddering like a leaf. Then it all stops. He’s completely still for a moment. When he opens his eyes again, that terrifyingly familiar hardness is back. “You’re not strong enough.”

“No…”

“Nice try,” the Precursors taunt in Newt’s voice. Hermann wants to reach into that throat and rip the vocal cords right out. _How dare they_. “Good luck getting him back now. He’s gone.” They lift Newt’s hands up to Hermann’s arms and start digging his nails into his elbows. It hurts - it hurts badly. Newt doesn’t look it, but he’s strong. Even stronger with an entire race of alien overlords possessing his body. 

“No,” Hermann grips tighter, taking the back of Newt’s head in one hand and threading his fingers firmly through his stuck-up hair. “He’s not gone yet.” He’s just being stubborn now, he knows he is, but he’ll be damned if he lets his best friend die right here in his arms. He’d rather the Precursors tear him apart than watch them do it to Newt. He’s foolish; but he considers the possibility that maybe that’s what it is to be in love. 

He loves Newt. He’s not letting him get away that easily.

The Precursors dig further into his skin. He’s going to start bleeding soon. “We need him,” they growl, Newt’s voice low and threatening.

“Not nearly as much as I do,” Hermann shoots back as they break through his skin. White hot pain screams through him and he wraps his body tighter around Newt’s. He won’t let go, no matter how much they hurt him. He won’t.

He’s sick of Newt taking all the pain for him.

“We want him!” They drag Newt’s leg up and press his knee into Hermann’s stomach, winding him. Hermann coughs and doubles over, only further driving Newt’s sharp kneecap into his gut. 

“I-” Hermann chokes. “I… I love him.”

He’s never said it out loud before. Finally. It feels pretty good to finally get it out in the open, to hear the words spill from his mouth and dance around his ears. Even if the only things around to hear it are monsters possessing a human body.

“Pathetic humans!” it’s as if a switch is suddenly flipped. The Precursors go completely berserk. Suddenly Newt is kicking and screaming and pounding on Hermann’s back, trying to bite his face, grinding his feet into his legs. The sounds he’s making cannot be identified as human - his movements can barely be called earthly, either. He spasms with a robotic fury, lashing out at any part of Hermann he can gain leverage on. His blood-coated nails gash open Hermann’s cheek, sharp knuckles strike his eye, sending everything spinning in a flurry of stars. 

And still, Hermann holds on, tighter, tighter. He buries his face in Newt’s burning neck. Feels his pulse exploding. His blood coursing faster than a bullet. If only he’d ever had chance to experience this in another time, another place, another reality, where Newt’s warmth wasn’t fuelled by murder and he held him back just as tightly instead of trying to throw him off, where he wasn’t slowly burning out and dying in his grasp. Where he didn’t have to use “saving your life” as an excuse to love him.

“It’s alright, Newt,” he hums into his ear, not really knowing,or even caring, if the real Newt is listening. If he can even hear him at all. “It’s alright. I love you. I love you.”

He loses all sense of everything for a while. Each blow Newt lands on him as he struggles is muffled until he can’t feel it at all. He can’t hear him screeching anymore. He’s aware of only one thing as he collapses into Newt: his voice, quiet and certain, desperately chanting the same three words into Newt’s hair. 

Until he goes completely still. 

Hermann feels his body go limp in his arms. He’s quiet and, with a quick inspection, Hermann realises he’s not breathing at all. 

“Newton?”

Nothing. Hermann feverishly scrambles to to take hold of his wrist. No pulse.

“Newton, can you hear me?”

“Newt, please wake up.”

There’s nothing. Just a pale, unstirring body. Hermann feels tears brimming as he looks down at Newt’s grubby face. It’s the happiest he’s looked in years. Finally at peace. Hermann sobs weakly and clutches him close. 

Then Newt’s whole body jerks forward and he inhales sharply.

Hermann is violently shaken from his mourning - really, this is rather uncouth of Newt - and his eyes open wider than the breach itself. “Newton?!” he looks at him, and, yes, Newt is looking right back at him. One of his eyes is bloodshot and he’s shivering like a newborn kitten, but he’s _alive_.

“Hermann?” Newt grasps at Hermann’s shoulders, half-blindly studying the scratches and bruises peppering Hermann’s tear-sodden face. Scratches and bruises his hands put there; not that he knows that. “What happened?”

Hermann coughs out a teary laugh, voice breaking in hysterical relief. He holds Newt’s head to his chest, shifting backwards so he’s resting in his lap. “Too much! Y-you were gone, you were dead, y-y-you…” he sniffs and presses his nose into Newt’s greasy hair. “I’d lost you. I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“They took me, Hermann,” Newt sounds like he’s crying now, too. “They were trying to get out of my head, go back to… to their world… they nearly got me,” he shudders, then looks up at Hermann with those soft green eyes he’s missed so much. “But you… d-did you bring me back?”

Hermann laughs shakily. “Yes. Yes, I think I did.” He tentatively presses their foreheads together, trying his best to stop crying and just be happy that Newt - the REAL Newt - is back with him. The tears won’t stop coming, though. Being in love is exhausting. He decides he doesn’t mind all that much, however.

Newt rubs the fabric of Hermann’s cardigan between his thumb and finger. He wipes the blood from around his mouth with his other hand. “This might sound… uh.... a little crazy,” he begins, slowly, choosing his words with a wariness that Hermann has never seen before. “But did you say that you love me? Like - I don’t know - about fifty times?” He can’t seem to look Hermann directly in the eyes.

In any other reality, Hermann truly believes that he would deny it. On any other day, in any other place, he would deny it. He would keep his secret until his dying breath, and perhaps even further. But he’s not in any other reality: he’s in this one, and in this one, the man he’s in love with just nearly died, and Hermann saved his life. In this one, Hermann cannot find it in himself to care anymore.

“Yes. I did.”

“Was it true?”

_Let Newt think what he wants._

“Of course it was true, you imbecile.”

Newt’s eyes finally meet Hermann’s again. There’s something in them that Hermann can’t really begin to work out. But he does believe that, if he was able to look into his own eyes, he’d see the same thing. “Hermann, I-” he swallows, hard and steady. “I don’t know… I don’t know what to say.” 

_Well, that’s a first, at least._

“You don’t have to say anything, Newt.”

“I-”

_Oh, to hell with it._

He takes Newt’s face in his hands and closes the gap between them.

It’s not really anything spectacular, as far as first kisses go. It’s certainly not what Hermann has envisioned all these years: Newt is filthy and he tastes like blood and acid: his own lips are dry and cracked: they’re both trembling. But it’s warm and safe and so, so very sincere. Newt’s a rather bloody brilliant kisser for a man who was dead only a few moments earlier. When Hermann finally pulls away, Newt’s looking at him with the biggest, brightest smile he’s ever seen.

“Why are you smiling like that?” 

“Because I love you, asshole,” Newt whispers. He wraps his arms around Hermann’s neck. He’s still shaking, but he’s warm again. He nuzzles softly into Hermann’s nape, breathing in that faint dusty lab scent he’d be ashamed to admit he’s missed for the last decade. “Oh, and because my old boss and a bunch of officers are looking right at us.”

Hermann laughs. On any other day he’d push Newt far away from him, scramble to his feet, out of the room, pretend it never happened. But today, he saved Newton Geiszler’s life with the power of his love alone, and he really cannot find it in himself to care. He kisses Newt’s cheek and pulls him closer.

**Author's Note:**

> *throws arms in the air* I FUCKING G U ESS,
> 
> (yeah i used lyrics from the scientist by coldplay as the title because i fucking hate myself)
> 
> if you enjoyed, please catch me over at https://burngormanlesbian.tumblr.com/ 
> 
> i'll probably write more self indulgent shit in the future.


End file.
